Catch 22 by Joseph Heller – Let the Book do the Worrying
Catch 22, published in 1961, is Joseph Heller’s novel about American airmen flying bombing missions over Italy during World War Two.
In many ways this is a book about fear. There is much to be afraid of in Catch 22, most obviously having to climb into an aircraft and fly it over places where people on the ground are determined to shoot you down. Amazingly, not everyone is scared by this situation. While the book’s central character, Captain John Yossarian, is terrified every time he steps into an aircraft, other airmen seem quite relaxed in their work. Some actually enjoy themselves, and fly recklessly when they don’t have to, looking for additional thrills. Some are terrified by the thought of flying, but are alright when they are actually flying. Adding to this confusion are the scary accidents and illnesses that can happen to people on apparently safe, solid ground, all of which causes Yossarian at one point to think that getting through the average day is a bit like flying through gunfire over Bologna. The book portrays fear and threat as existing everywhere, skewed by varying individual perceptions of risk. Sometimes dangers are imagined, sometimes they are real. Danger results from both worrying too much, and too little.
The consideration of fear meant more to me than the satirical material – about corrupt military authority, or heartless capitalism – that the book is famous for. Take, for example, the Catch 22 after which the book is named. The Catch describes a weird logic trap that keeps airmen doing dangerous missions. They can be relieved from flying if stress has driven them mad. But if they say that stress has driven them mad and they can’t fly missions anymore, that means they are clearly sensible and sane – because who in their right mind would want to undertake hazardous bombing missions? And being sane, they will have to keep flying. It’s the people who keep flying without complaint who are really mad, but as they don’t ask to be grounded, they have to keep flying. So everyone keeps flying.
I was a bit suspicious of all this. It seemed more of a fancy literary device than a reflection of reality. Wondering how many people were actually relieved of duty for mental health reasons during World War Two, I did a search, and found figures quoted by the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, suggesting that roughly 40% of medical discharges for American military personnel during the war were due to psychological injury. So, the idea that someone could not be discharged for combat stress is not true. For me, the book’s satirical elements characteristically took a kernel of truth, and expanded it to less than truthful proportions.
Joseph Heller himself said that when he was serving as an airman during the war, he never had a bad officer. His real wartime experience did not reflect a situation where ruthless commanders would keep their men flying no matter what. He described his book as a satire of 1950s McCarthyism and the Cold War, rather than a reflection on the wrongs of military organisation during World War Two. That might be so, but, for me, bringing the Cold War into it doesn’t really make the idea of Catch 22 any more realistic. John Steinbeck said that in satire ‘you have to restrict the picture,’ and that’s what happens here.
I had mixed views on Catch 22. Nevertheless, I did admire its unexpected relevance to the mental heath and anxiety problems which have become more prominent in our own times. I would even go so far as to say the book could increase our understanding of these issues.
